Light-emitting elements including an organic compound as a luminous body, which have features such as thinness, lightness, high-speed response, and DC driving at low voltage, are expected to be applied to next-generation flat panel displays. In particular, display devices in which light-emitting elements are arranged in a matrix are considered to have advantages of a wide viewing angle and high visibility over conventional liquid crystal display devices.
A light-emitting element is said to have the following light emission mechanism: when voltage is applied between a pair of electrodes with a light-emitting layer including a luminous body provided therebetween, electrons injected from the cathode and holes injected from the anode are recombined in an light emission center of the light-emitting layer to form molecular excitons, and energy is released and light is emitted when the molecular excitons relax to the ground state. A singlet excited state and a triplet excited state are known as excited states, and light emission can probably be obtained through either state. Light emission from the singlet excited state (S*) is called fluorescence, and light emission from the triplet excited state (T*) is called phosphorescence.
In order to improve element characteristics of such light-emitting elements, improvement of an element structure, development of a material, and the like have been actively carried out (see, for example, Patent Document 1).